Ted Nordhaus: "Demons Under Every Rock The Ever-Expanding Definition of Climate Denial"

This disturbing and memorable story has kept coming back to me the last few years, as a cadre of climate activists, ideologically motivated scholars, and sympathetic journalists have started labeling an ever-expanding circle of people they disagree with climate deniers.

Climate change, of course, is real and demons are not. But in the expanding use of the term “denier,” the view of the climate debate as a battle between pure good and pure evil, and the social dimensions of the narrative that has been constructed, some quarters of the climate movement have begun to seem similarly unhinged.

Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans. Then it was expanded to so-called “lukewarmists,” scientists and other analysts who believe that global warming is happening and is caused by humans, but either don’t believe it will prove terribly severe or believe that human societies will prove capable of adapting without catastrophic impacts.

As frustration grew after the failure of legislative efforts to cap US emissions in 2010, demons kept appearing wherever climate activists looked for them. In 2015, Bill McKibben argued in the New York Times that anyone who didn’t oppose the construction of the Keystone pipeline, without regard to any particular stated view about climate change, was a denier.

Then in December 2015, Harvard historian and climate activist Naomi Oreskesexpanded the definition further. “There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late,” Oreskes wrote in the Guardian, “one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs. Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power.”

Oreskes took care not to mention the scientists in question, for that would have been awkward. They included Dr. James Hansen, who gave the first congressional testimony about the risks that climate change presented the world, and has been a leading voice for strong, immediate, and decisive global action to address climate change for almost three decades. The others—Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira, and Tom Wigley—are all highly decorated climate scientists with long and well-established histories of advocating for climate action. The four of them had travelled to the COP21 meeting in Paris that December to urge the negotiators and NGOs at the meeting to embrace nuclear energy as a technology that would be necessary to achieve deep reductions in global emissions.

So it was only a matter of time before my colleagues and I at the Breakthrough Institute would be tarred with the same brush. In a new article in the New Republic, reporter Emily Atkin insists that we are “lukewarmists.” She accuses us of engaging in a sleight of hand “where climate projections are lowballed; climate change impacts, damages, and costs are underestimated” and claims that we, like other deniers, argue “that climate change is real but not urgent, and therefore it’s useless to do anything to stop it.”

As a luke warmer geologist and frequent contributor to Watts Up With That, who thinks that humans are only responsible for 20-40% of recent warming, that the climate sensitivity (TCR) is less than 1.5 C, that there is almost no chance of catastrophic climate change (short of the end of this interglacial stage) and that N2N (natural gas to nuclear) is the only viable pathway to low carbon-emission energy, I say…

Welcome to the “club”!

Maybe we need a betting pool for which activist is the last to be labeled a “denier.”

172 thoughts on “Ted Nordhaus: "Demons Under Every Rock The Ever-Expanding Definition of Climate Denial"”

Given the quasi-religious nature of the climate change movement, as a sect of the larger green movement, any disagreement from the catechism makes one a heretic. There are unfortunate parallels to socialism, which started as a political/economic tendency, and diverged into a competing aggregation of followers of various theorists turned secular prophets.

More a direct line of causality than a parallel. Climate change is part of the far left’s Zeitgeist. At a time when the moderate left dissolved because they had nothing left to believe in (after their embrace of “neo-liberalism”). So all the old far-left tactics no-platform, persecution of pariahs, … were incorporated into climatist politics.

There is a good parallel with the Pol Pot regime which, as times got harder, started to execute people on the fringes of the party, and when they got harder still, started to spiral the executions inwards to closer party members, so that by the time the regime collapsed there were only a handful of party leaders still alive, all looking over their shoulders.

Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans.

Not sure I agree with that.
I have long been labelled with that term but have never been a right-wing ideologue.
The term has long just been used as an excuse to avoid debate. It is used to silence anybody that wants to understand the issues rather than rely on faith.

Holocaust denier is used to label people as mad, because holocaust deniers don’t accept evidence.
Climate deniers however ask for evidence, which there is not. Yet we are labeled mad, while warmists ask for accepting non evidence based science, which is a mad proposition in itself.
We must fight the label denier with all means possible. We deny nothing, we ask evidence.

The crazy thing is that when I categorically present the clear evidence that the climate sensitivity is low, the natural variabilities of temperature and CO2 are higher than presented, the abject failures of the models, the inconsistencies between instrumental and proxy data and the fraudulent nature of the 97% “consensus”, I get called a “climate”, “climate change” or climate science denier”… When I ask what it is that I am specifically denying, the response is usually a complex logical fallacy (ad hominem, ad populum, ad vericundian, etc.).

Sure, their frustration is that they thought they were done, that it is simple, and that the science is settled. The prospect of studying a lot more does not appeal.
Still, it is worth engaging these people to whatever extent you can tolerate their bile. They have an idea that every skeptic is an ignorant coal miner out of a job. I’m very happy to show them otherwise, to accept their label, and to explain to THEM very specifically what I am denying.

Scarface,
First I was labeled a denier and I accepted that. Next came deplorable. I actually embraced that label and considered getting a t-shirt but I could not get the combined label right; ‘deplorable denier’ just doesn’t grasp the depth of my depravity and ‘dastardly deplorable denier’ seemed a bit presumptuous, almost as if I were an archvillian. Then, in an epiphany, It hit me. I am simply ‘despicable’. Despicable me:..

Unless I’m very wrong about you and your father’s comments I’ve read, you honestly believe that a socialist form of government would be best for Mankind. You honestly believe that. But you can’t stomach dishonesty being used to accomplish it.
PS Guys, please don’t start a subtopic about socialism vs “whatever”.

Pretty much right.
The use of dishonesty shows that you daren’t refine your ideas in the bright fire of reality.
That can’t be good in the long term.
Regardless of your position on the political spectrum, there cannot be a justification for that position without a love of the truth. And that truth cannot be found without challenging it…. to prove it isn’t wrong.
Claiming “97%” and refusing to debate is not honest.

Deniers of ever more stripes are accused of heresy because they question the impending catastrophic effects of purportedly dangerous levels of CO2.
Your comment is evidence of high blood gas levels of N2O..

“PS Guys, please don’t start a subtopic about socialism vs “whatever”.”
Um, you just started it. socialism *is* the most correct form of human government and nearly all humans from Borneo to New York City practice some forms of it. It is a very loosely defined word.
Cooperative living is wonderful; command and control tends to be resisted. But when people do not willingly subscribe to a cooperative ideal that leaves abandoning the experiment or forcing your view on others. It seems that humans choose to force their views on others; which if there’s only a few “holdouts” makes some sense; but as the pincher tightens its grip, fewer and fewer people willingly subscribe.
The parable of the Little Red Hen is instructive. Many people want the benefits of socialism but not so many are willing to work in the hot kitchen to make it happen.

There’s a big difference between voluntary and forced participation. A Government forcing individuals to pay for others benefit is servitude that’s just shy of slavery. …When you are not given the choice.

Closing down debate is EXACTLY what the most of the activist left does. (as against normal people with left-leaning views) They don’t want to debate so instead shut it down with ad homs. Pretty feeble imo.

Yes. It certainly doesn’t help the debate to repeat these untruths or irrelevancies. If people funded by fossil fuels are so bad they must be called “deniers” and ignored, then surely the equal argument applies to zealots whose funding DEPENDS on catastrophic climate change being a non-fictional possibility.

Agreed. I’d like them to name names. Who were the, “right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies,…,“? I don’t know of any. Peter Gleick claimed to know, but his evidence was a fairy tale.
I searched that phrase, and found The Ideology of Climate Change Denial in the United States written by Jean-Daniel Collomb and published in “The European Journal of American Studies.” The article is full of smug phraseology about American climate denial.
Jean-Daniel’s scholarly sources proving that corporations cynically fund climate deniers and that,
“Wealthy right-wing ideologues have joined with the most cynical and irresponsible companies in the oil, coal, and mining industries to contribute large sums of money to finance pseudoscientific front groups that specialize in sowing confusion in the public’s mind about global warming.”
are, … wait for it … Naomi Oreskes and Al Gore.
Just proves that when deliberate BS is rolled down the cultural hill, it snowballs into an avalanche of mindless certainty.

I’m a right-wing ideologue on national defense and foreign policy, but fairly libertarian otherwise. And I’ve been “funded by fossil fuel companies” since 1981.
The “fossil fuel companies” paid me to explore for oil & gas.
My skepticism of AGW and rejection of CAGW is mostly due to my geoscience education and experience.
My advocacy against the CAGW propaganda is due to my libertarian philosophy and my geoscience education and experience.
So, Nordhaus’ original definition of “denier” is a non sequitur… nothing follows from fossil fuel company funding.

While the accusation that they were funded by big oil was frequently made, the number of people who actually were (such as yourself, indirectly) were few and far between.
I say indirectly because your paycheck deals with exploring for oil and gas, not for frequenting sites such as this.

I don’t know about being few and far between, Mark. A decent number of us on this board (myself included) are in the employ of oil companies at our day jobs. Whether it’s direct (we support our companies) indirect (we see the issues from the light of our day jobs) or secondary (engineers tend to be conservative, tend to work for oil companies, and tend to distrust modeling).
I do know that I’m not being paid for this. That’s why I don’t use my last name.

I do have one of those “point” cards from a gas station, but aside from that I’ve never gotten a dime from “Big Oil”.
My pay comes from “Big Water” via a local government.
Good thing “CAGW” ignores water vapor.
If I defended Di-hydrogen Monoxide ( http://www.dhmo.org/), I might be out of a job!

I don’t know any right-wing ideologues who have been paid by fossil fuel companies. I am an Electrical Engineer for whatever that’s worth, but it is interesting how the left is only good at shouting down people who do not submit. Their belief system is not based on real science and evidence, but on political ideology. One of their operational tactics is to fabricate historical records to effectively re-write history in order to control the future. Orwell’s 1984 had it right. Our job is to fight these bums at every turn.

‘Nuff said: “We can transition to a decarbonized economy,” Oreskes claimed in the Guardian, “by focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency and demand management.” Watch out for that ‘demand management’ – to these people it usually translates into a bullet in the brain.

Demand Management means the elites like Obama and the government officials and movie stars can still live the good life with huge carbon footprints in huge yachts and private planes however , the average worker will have to ride is small cars, live in small homes, no vacations, sporadic expensive electricity, eat no beef, etc.

I refuse to ride an Ass to work. The company logo looks like hell, I’m tired of shoveling their manure whilst they complain about the barn door being open and…..wait a minute! What if I plug one of them in!

I remember the reports of demand management of water supplies to houses in California during the drought. Million dollar homes of the Elite with there water features were exempt. Restrictions on the poor were tightly controlled. It’s all about how to “best” manage the limited resource.

Extremists, such as Ms. Oreskes, sow the seeds for growth of the forces that will destroy CAGW. Rigid dogma deviates from the facts on the ground relatively rapidly. Enforcement of dogma leads disinterested observers to question “truth.”

“As a luke warmer… who thinks that humans are only responsible for 20-40% of recent warming, that the climate sensitivity (TCR) is less than 1.5 C, that there is almost no chance of catastrophic climate change… and that N2N (natural gas to nuclear) is the only viable pathway to low carbon-emission energy, I say… Welcome…!”
What he said.

There is a sect (call them “Calvinists” that agree on the end point of everything with the original “Lutherans,” but differ on the fiddly bits). This sect admits that rising CO2, by itself, can only cause a very tiny change in retained heat. Their religious dogma is that this very tiny change will leverage a much large increase in water vapor, which will leverage even more water vapor, the cycle continuing until we are Venus.
A mildly more rational dogma, although still false to fact.

Writing Observer misrepresents the lukewarmer position: “Their religious dogma is that this very tiny change will leverage a much large increase in water vapor, which will leverage even more water vapor, the cycle continuing until we are Venus.”
This lukewarmer believes that laboratory studies of GHGs provide reliable absorption cross-sections that allow scientists to calculate that a doubling of CO2 would reduce the flux of thermal infrared to space by about 3.7 W/m2. A blackbody near 255 K or a graybody with an emissivity of 0.61 near 288 K would need to warm 1.0 K and 1.15 K to emit an addition 3.7 W/m2 of thermal infrared. This isn’t a “tiny change”, nor one as large as the IPCC projects. It is more useful to say that these black- and graybody models for the earth emit 3.8 and 3.3 W/m2/K of thermal infrared upon warming. AOGCM’s predict an increase of 3.2 W/m2/K if warming is artificially introduced and nothing else changes (no-feedbacks). .
It is well known that water vapor at equilibrium with liquid water (ie near the ocean and near clouds) increases by about 7%/K around 288 K. An increase of this magnitude is enough to reduce outgoing LWR by about another 2 W/m2/K, which is enough to double the above warming, but not convert the planet into another Venus when CO2 doubles. However, water vapor is not in equilibrium with liquid water. It’s concentration at various altitudes depends on turbulent mixing, large scale convection, and precipitation, phenomena that can only be modeled AOGCMs via parameterization. Furthermore, changing temperature and water vapor will change the lapse rate, clouds and surface albedo. In simple and complex models, the change in lapse rate with absolute humidity and surface temperature increases outgoing thermal infrared by 1 W/m2/K, negating about half of water vapor’s effect as a GHG.
CERES monitors outgoing thermal radiation as MGST (not the anomaly) rises and falls every year. It observes that outgoing thermal IR from clear skies (where only WV+LR feedback operates) increases about 2.2 W/m2/K very close to what we expect from the graybody model or AOGCMs with no feedbacks and calculations. However models disagree with observations and with each other about what happens to LWR emitted from and SWR reflected by cloudy skies and about reflection of SWR from the surface. The SWR changes don’t appear to vary linearly with temperature. And there are problems equating the feedback associated with seasonal and global warming.
CERES shows that 2.3 W/m2/K more thermal radiation is emitted from cloud skies during seasonal warming, essentially the same as clear skies, where both models and observations agree closely. That is equivalent to an ECS of 1.6 K/doubling – which is certainly nothing like Venus. In fact it is just about what energy balance models predict. Positive cloud feedback and surface albedo could cause this value to increase, but it is hard for negative cloud feedback to drive ECS below 1.0 K/doubling without improbably big changes in planetary albedo.
Now you don’t have have make misleading statements about the beliefs of the lukewarmer sect.

This is all very reminiscent of the Committee for Public Safety in France during the Revolution. They expected you to support “freedom”, but they only had one idea of what that meant. Even those who wanted to maintain the monarchy or (gasp) were members of the Roman Catholic religion were tarnished as opposing freedom. Even strong supporters of the revolution (including Lafayette and Thomas Paine) were accused of crimes against freedom because they did not support Robespierre’s views.
Back then, the Reign of Terror did not last long, but it caused enough damage.We need somebody to call out Oreskes-pierre of the modern Reign of Terror. If there is only room for one, very narrow set of beliefs, that is not freedom.

Post Modernists don’t believe in Liberty, nor in Logic, nor Science (it’s a construct of racist ‘dead white men’ you see). They are not interested in Fact-Based Reasoning (Empiricism) nor the Scientific Method except where it can be used to achieve their goal.
And what is their true goal ?
POWER – the ability to impose their will on other human beings. This is the true nature of goal of the Left, everything else is tactical positions that will be abandoned if another route to power opens up (eg. for gay rights, women’s rights, Jewish Rights, but now flipped on its head as the Left has decided that fast-breeding Muslims that hate all the former are the new route to power).
Now Oreskes is probably neither smart enough nor well-enough read to understand the themes of Post Modernism, but she does take her cues from those that do.
The power between the Individual and the State is a Zero-Sum Game. The State only gains power by taking it from Individuals. and Individuals gain Liberty only by reducing the power of the State. From Communist Socialism (Extreme Left, State has all the power, individuals have none) to Anarchy (Extreme Right, Individuals have complete freedom, no State except spontaneous and temporary coalitions of citizens) we all lie on the spectrum somewhere.
There are those who are convinced that the only way to make progress is for the State to gain power (stripping Individuals of Liberty). They are so convinced they are right and so self-righteous in this belief that they are prepared to lie, deceive and even to subvert the scientific process to do this. These people are dangerous and the enemy of Free People.

I agree entirely.
However, I might add something to Moa’s excellent summary of the current situation by commenting on the “Free People” mentioned at the end of the piece.
The citizens of Western democracies are ostensibly ‘free’ in that we have certain rights and liberties and we can topple governments at the ballot box.
But it’s that last bit which will ultimately be our undoing.
I subscribe to the view that democracy carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. As soon as the people realise they can vote themselves ‘free money’, the corruption of the system is assured.
About half of the U.S. voters at the last election voted Democrat (socialist) – i.e. essentially they voted for a welfare state – despite the fact that the Democrat candidate was – and is – arguably one of the most corrupt politicians in recent history.
Here in Australia, our so-called ‘conservative’ coalition recently delivered a socialist budget in an effort to appease as many left-leaning voters as possible – voters who will not countenance any erosion of government handouts whatsoever, even though our federal debt is at all-time highs and ballooning ever higher.
Regardless of the Global Warming debate (or lack of one), the totalitarian Left, now disarmingly termed ‘socialism’, is very much in the driver’s seat. Behind the scenes in democracies all over the world, they’ve done their work patiently, quietly, and assiduously, ever since Mao and Stalin made communism a dirty word.
And they will almost certainly achieve their aims quite soon now.
Welfare recipients, and people who aspire to be, don’t have any idea what they’re voting for. But voting is something they won’t have to concern themselves about for very much longer.

Interested wrote: “Regardless of the Global Warming debate (or lack of one), the totalitarian Left, now disarmingly termed ‘socialism’, is very much in the driver’s seat. Behind the scenes in democracies all over the world, they’ve done their work patiently, quietly, and assiduously, ever since Mao and Stalin made communism a dirty word.”
I think that sums it up pretty good. The question is: Is it too late to turn it around? I don’t think it is in the United States. I think Trump’s election is a sign that a lot of people are dissatisfied with the Left’s agenda.
I don’t know that we can turn it around without Trump helping us to push back on the Totalitarians. I think the Totalitarians know this and this is one reason they are fighting so hard against Trump. My money is on Trump. 🙂

America’s Founders had the right idea when they originally extended the right to vote only to property-owners, ie. the people with an actual economic stake in the country’s future, however large or small. The seeds of democracy’s destruction lie in universal suffrage, extended regardless of one’s ability to cast a thougtful vote.

During the Terror 2-3% of the entire French population was arrested and imprisoned as “deniers” and approx.1% were guillotined – in today’s US that would be just over 3 million executed.
In the end the “Oreskes” of the day were overthrown, and to stick with the tried and true, were all guillotined – their leader Robespierre facing up, as a special thank you gesture from the “deniers”.
Now who says that some stories don’t have a good ending…?

As an Engineer with over 50 years in the energy business including renewables and carbon capture among others, I can definitively say that Naomi Oreskes has no clue as to the folly of eliminating fossil based energy for many decades. To further claim to no need Nuclear further illustrates her ignorance.
Even IEA warns that development of renewable will not even meet the Paris Accord Accord Agreement which is modest compared to California plans. Who is refusing to accept the real facts, Her.http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/09/energy-technology-is-not-advancing-fast-enough-to-meet-climate-goals.html
The US has spent a fortune on Obama’s objective without results, OBAMA’s big failure, by deciding to double down on the same failed technologies, building commercial plants without addressing problems in pilot plants with more tax payer dollars! We need something new and innovative not the same old stuff.
Does anyone realistically think we could switch to electric cars, even if a suitable battery is developed which is questionable, assuming that the electrical grid can handle the significantly increased load? Biofuels have also failed and the Navy is spending hundreds of dollars per gallon for scarce fuel.

I believe that Mankind’s burning up the Earth’s very finite supply of fossil fuels is not such a good idea and I would like to use AGW as another reason to conserve but the science is just not there. Climate change has been going on for eons and for eons the cause of climate change cannot have been mankind’s burning of fossil fuels. Since the beginning of the industrial revolution, climate change has not been any different then climate change before the industrial revolution. Since the early 1700’s we have been warming up from the coldest part of the Little Ice Age, much as we warmed up from the Dark Ages Cooling Period more than 1500 years ago. According to the work done with models, the climate change we have been experiencing correlates with an integral of total solar activity and ocean related cycles and not CO2. There is plenty of scientific rational to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. If CO2 really did affect climate then one would expect that the increase in CO2 over the past 30 years would have caused at least a measureable increase in the dry lapse rate in the troposphere but that has not happened. The radiant greenhouse effect upon which the AGW conjecture depends has not been observed anywhere in the solar system including the Earth, The radiant greenhouse effect is science fiction hence the AGW conjecture that depends upon the radiant greenhouse effect is also science fiction.

I am 100% percent sure you are 100% right, well maybe. Are we absolutely sure fossil fuels are very finite? I think there may be some doubt. I would like to see at least 3 more attempts to drill for abiotic oil, $20 million per? Seems cheap if it MIGHT be right!

Economically recoverable fossil fuels are finite – although not “very” finite. Best projections I’ve seen take us into the next millennium.
“Abiotic oil,” on which I am not qualified to offer an opinion as to its existence, is likely to not be economically recoverable in sufficient quantity to continue our energy consumption rate past the year 3000 or so – at least not when compared to alternatives (no, not solar, wind, or bio – nuclear of either the present fission variety or a future fusion technology).

Writing Observer, no. We will not run out suddenly or soon, but the peak in oil production is about 2025 despite the current fracked shale glut. And what remains will dwindle toward ‘zero’ over ~150 years. Natural gas is much better off (more large relatively untapped reservoirs and gas shales. Coal still better off than natural gas, but there are several reputable studies (look up Dave Rutledge of Cal Tech) that say even peak coal production could happen by 2060-2080 thanks to thinner seams, deeper seams, less strip minable as the good stuff is used up first. And some vast coal resources like Norway’s Haltenbanken have no conceivable way to extract anything. The deposit lies 4000 meters under the seafloor under 1500 meters of ocean

According to Tommy Gold’s well-argued theory, abiotic oil IS of course economically recoverable, because that is a lot of (most of?) what we are using NOW. What might be at issue is the rate at which the shallow pools refill automatically. It certainly does seem that the pools are larger than expected so they may be getting a percolating resupply from in-place deeper pools. If so, it’s a matter of seeing if we can wait for it to come up rather than drilling down for it. Who can say. But people who read this blog are already known for considering non-consensus views.

Hey Ristvan
There is way more coal than we could conceivably use. With increasing levels of automation, what was once uneconomic will become viable.
The North Sea alone is slated to hold a resource of up to 23 TRILLION tonnes. Annual global consumption is around 7-8 billion tonnes.
I know of numerous multi-billion tonne resources that are not currently being mined but are currently viable.

The Earth is finite in volume and mass hence it’s resources must be finite. A few hundred years or a few thousand years is really a short time span. Advances in technology may allow us to get at more of the Earth’s fossil fuel resources but eventually these resources will run out too. Actually new fossil fuel is being created but at a much shower rate then we are using it up. Before the fuel runs out mankind must switch to alternate sources of energy and must reduce our population so that the alternate sources of energy will be sufficient for our needs. Conserving on the use of fossil fuels gives us more time but it has no effect on climate.

I wonder if methane could be extracted from the rivers and lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan. With less than a quarter of Earths mass, it should be in a shallower gravity well (perhaps there are even shallower sources). Perhaps it could be pipelined into space. Giant tankers could glide to Earth space shuttle style with occasional mishaps yielding spectacular fireworks displays.

Carbon-based compounds are green and renewable in limited concentration and over unknown periods, respectively. Ironically, “green” technology including photovoltaic panels and windmills are neither green nor renewable, but there is a conflation of converters and drivers that has forced a popular misconception promoting a very profitable development misalignment.

Re: “Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues… who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans. Then it was expanded to so-called “lukewarmists,”…”
Lukewarmists are counted as part of the “consensus” when polling to show how marginalized the evil “deniers” are. But lukewarmists are considered evil deniers in all other contexts.
Re: “As a luke warmer… who thinks that humans are only responsible for 20-40% of recent warming, that the climate sensitivity (TCR) is less than 1.5 C…”
The IPCC thinks that anthropogenic GHG emissions are responsible for >100% of recent warming (but that some of the warming has been masked by aerosols), and their central estimate for ECS is 3.0 °C.
AR4: “It is likely that increases in GHG concentrations alone would have caused more warming than observed because volcanic and anthropogenic aerosols have offset some warming that would otherwise have taken place.” [Synthesis Report, Section 2.4]
AR5: “…There is high confidence that aerosols and their interactions with clouds have offset a substantial portion of global mean forcing from well-mixed greenhouse gases.” [Summary for Policymakers, Section C, p.14]
Since they don’t say how much more than 100%, I’m just going to use 100%.
3.0 °C ECS would put TCR (which is said to be about 2/3 ECS) at about 2.0 °C.
The IPCC’s sensitivity estimates are based on the assumption that 100% (or more) of recent warming was caused by anthropogenic forcings (mainly GHGs). If only 40% of recent warming is actually anthropogenic, then ECS should be about (40%/100%) × 3.0 = only about 1.2 °C, and TCR should be only about 2/3 of that, or 0.8 °C.
Obviously those are not scary numbers.
Calculating the weighted-average U.S. broadcast meteorologist opinion, as measured in the latest AMS poll, yields a “central value opinion” that 56% of the warming over the last fifty years was anthropogenic. That would suggest that ECS is 0.56 × 3.0 = about 1.7 °C, and TCR should be only about 2/3 of that, or 1.1 °C.
Still not at all scary.http://sealevel.info/AMS/2017_Survey_Report_bar_chart.png
Refs: http://sealevel.info/AMS/
BTW, I think that meteorologists are particularly well-suited to make that judgement, because they are well-equipped to distinguish between climate and mere weather, yet they have no “skin in the game” to bias their judgement. I’d say that a mainstream judgement is one consistent with their average opinion: i.e., that (very roughly) half of the reported warming over the last fifty years was due to anthropogenic GHGs.
Eventually, everyone will be lukewarmers. It’ll probably take a while, though.

I’ve stated several times that I would probably have answered yes to all of the questions in that first survey. The only question being, since “significant” wasn’t define, what definition would I have picked on that day. It depends on the mood I was in.

Eventually, everyone will be lukewarmers. It’ll probably take a while, though.

Perhaps.
Consider that in the context of polls that ask how many people actually care.
In every poll I’ve seen, climate change comes in stone motherless last on the list of fourteen things people worry about.
Even the UN conducted a world wide poll and found the same thing with a response of millions.
And yet, 97% of scientists say the earth is warming catastrophically based on examining a sample size of one . . just one.
I reckon the “deni*r” meme is just another version of the “basket of deplorables – same tactic.

I would think you would have to have warming that is outside natural variation in order to be a lukewarmer.
I would think that one would have to assume natural variation until proven otherwise.
We have had two warming periods since 1910, both of which are about the same magnitude, and the earlier warm period is not attributed to CO2, yet some people want to attribute today’s warming to CO2 when it isn’t any different than from 1910 to 1940.
It sure looks like natural variation to me, and that’s the way I will consider it until proven otherwise. That’s the way everyone should look at it. Assuming a certain amount of CO2 net warming is pure speculation.

Some three decades ago a now deceased attorney friend, reinforced by others in their business since, told me how bad it would get. He thought it was from their starting advertising, but it still seems to be a question of which is the cause and which the effect. Called a skeptic in print (not about climate), never a denier that I know of, but I know of similar name calling by frustrated loser science types, even up to plagiarism and worse. These sorts of things are often so ludicrous as to be jokes, but they have caused lots of misery. It may not be fair, but one has to wonder about the quality of their science when they do this. Oops, loser is probably a pejorative.
Is there a rumor/innuendo/defamation index? If so I suspect it has increased greatly in science (academia, society, in general?).

As a Libertarian/Conservative Deplorable I’m a Denier Heretic. Funny how that seems to be the case with most Right-Wingers as labeled by the Leftist. I can’t look it up at the moment, but I saw an article that showed more Conservatives knew more about science than Liberal’s. It made the point that Liberals tend to just believe what they are told to believe in, while Conservatives actually researched to find the facts. Which is why I label the Leftist as “Drones” in most of their ideologies, because like insects they follow a leader without questioning what they’re saying. Which is why the Right-Winger’s have lots of problems in politics, because they have independent thought’s and opinions about issues, where the Leftist vote in a hive minded way on issues.
Only a fool would deny the climate has warmed since the end of the LGM and even the LIA. But no measurable amount of that warming can be blamed upon fossil fuels to the extent that Alarmist herald and government’s found another form of gaining massive incomes from their populations…that globally socialist founded those like the Paris Agreement to destroy capitalism and spread the wealth from the better off to the less productive countries to create a global equality by their New World Order ideologies. The real Science Deniers are the extreme Leftist Environmental-cases that are misanthropist that blame humans for all of the problems on Earth…yet don’t take the lead and practice what they preach.

The real problem here is the labeling and name calling. It’s used as a substitute to substantive debate. In fact its used as a means to avoid discussion completely. Peter Glieck had a message a few months back to anyone who would dare disagree on climate… STFU! I’d love to tell him that he’s doing much more damage to his cause than advancing it. Instead, I’ll just remember what a friend once said when you opponent is stuck in a hole and just digging themselves in deeper, just let them continue digging.

Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans.

Wrong, wronger, and flat-out lies. It was used for any and all Skeptics/Climate Realists, the vast majority who stuck their necks out in the interests of supporting the truth, and in support of actual science, not pseudoscience. The whole “funded by fossil fuel companies” is a straight-out lie., and you end with a straw man argument. Nice.

“Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans.”
I’ve heard these claims many times but just who are these right-wing ideologues that are funded by the oil companies to throw cold water on the CAGW narrative? Sounds like Fake History to me.

I just started obsessing on the wording, “Green Climate Fund”, and I’m thinking that it is a really strange name.
Even using the word, “green” metaphorically to mean “environmentally friendly”, it implies a level of human control in making the environment more friendly that seems, how should I put it, “anthropoarrogant”.
Climate has always had a brutal aspect to it, right? And so to create a fund that favors getting rid of the brutal aspect of it is just infantile fantasy funding.
This is a fund that the rich contribute to, as they bask in their large-carbon-footprint lifestyles to generate the necessary disposable income to support the fantasy.
I propose a “Black Climate Fund” to raise awareness of the dark side of climate and to fund economically realistic endeavors that aim to adapt to all aspects of climate as opposed to trying to eliminate the actual harsh realities of it.
In this respect, “Green Climate” is racist, because it oppresses “Black Climate”. Black Climate Matters!

Well a step forward for truth in science.
Someone has decided to wring the last few dollars out of the the biggest scam in human history.
Watch the rush for the crumbs.
Greed has multiple back flips once the lucrative fraud has been as the first word of this sentence.

It really doesn’t matter what anybody calls anybody. If these loons ever come to power, reality will just bite them in the you know whutt. And the reality is that fossil fuel usage, unless replaced by nuclear, isn’t going anywhere for a long, long time. The folks will just vote them out of power unless they modify their stance. (didn’t one of these nutters recently call obama a d’nier for embracing natural gas?)

Well it almost seems as if Ted Nordhaus didn’t mind the use of the d-word as long as it was not applied to himself; it is only the “excessive” use that he objects to. That is an odd position to take. We either accept the use of defamatory and derogatory terms to suppress honest debate, or we don’t. If we do, then we shouldn’t be surprised when find ourselves on the receiving end.

Since none of the climate change advocates will not be around 2100, who gives a rats a$$. Climate change has been occurring for millions of years and will continue whether humans are here or not. Computers know only what we tell them, they are the victim of GIGO.

Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans.

Is there actually documented proof that oil, gas or coal companies paid people to express an opinion?

The Big Oil payoff is supposedly done indirectly via “right wing think tanks and foundations.” Often it is assumed and insinuated by green propagandists that any think tank that takes a skeptical position on climate change devotes 100% of its donations to funding that skepticism, although in reality only 5% or 10% of its resources might go to that facet of its operations. (IIRC, Heartland allocates 20% of its funding to climate change skepticism.)

Speaking of definitions being misused, I think that the definition of “heat” is rarely used correctly in the “CO2 will fry us” debate. After all, “there are only two ways to increase a body’s temperature, and the first is with work being done on the body, and the second is with heat being sent to the body. The 1st Law of Thermodynamics captures this.”
In “Thermal Physics (2nd Edition)” by Charles Kittel and Herbert Kroemer we see this:“Heat is defined as any spontaneous flow of energy from one object to another caused by a difference in temperature between the objects. We say that “heat” flows from a warm radiator into a cold room, from hot water into a cold ice cube, and from the hot Sun to the cool Earth. The mechanism may be different in each case, but in each of these processes the energy transferred is called “heat”.”
I have been looking for anyone to use the actual first law of thermodynamics and the actual definition of heat, not an argument by analogy, to show how a cooler atmosphere can cause temperature increase on the warmer surface by CO2 and back radiation.

MS, you have misconceived the basic dynamics of the system. Energy enters the earth system as short wave radiation, mostly visible light, produced by the Sun. When it strikes land or ocean, it warms those surfaces. Those ‘surfaces’ then cool by various processes such a convection and emission of long wave radiation (IR). The greenhouse effect is a lack of sufficient atmospheric radiative cooling to offset the incoming sun energy. That causes the earth system to warm until sufficiently more IR is generated to restore the energy balance between incoming and outgoing radiation from/to space. Essay Sensitive Uncertainty in ebook Blowing Smoke goes into much more detail, but the essence is in this simple summary comment. No first law of thermodynamics is involved in the GHE.

ristvan.
We could not be in more disagreement. But it is nice you point out another place where lack of precision is a problem. There is an atmospheric effect which could be called the GHE if one must use the green house metaphor. But there is a radiative GHE or rGHE which is very different and it is the radiative GHE that the luke-warmers and the alarmists believe in. The shell game played likes to switch the two whenever it suits the person talking. Again, just like the original post was pointing out about terms.
It is too bad that site policy prohibits debate on this topic. Perhaps someday that will change. But for now, I’ll leave it here as to go any further might upset a moderator.

“We can transition to a decarbonized economy without expanded nuclear power, by focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency and demand management. In fact, our best studies show that we can do it faster, and more cheaply ….” (Oreskes).
=================================
‘Den1er’ serves the same purpose as did ‘wrecker’ during ‘30s purges in the USSR.
When Naomi uses “we” she doesn’t include you and me.
Here are the sources of greenhouse gases (mainly CO2) in the US by sector:https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/styles/medium/public/2017-04/total_0.png
Without nuclear the only way to ’decarbonize’ is to de-industrialise degenerate deteriorate decline and decay.

As your chart indicates, the Transportation sector utilizes as much energy as current electric generation. So, if the goal is to decarbonize society, transportation must be included. To include transportation as additional electric demand, you will need to redouble current generation production.
In 2015 the world consumed almost 25,000 Twh of electricity. https://yearbook.enerdata.net/world-electricity-production-map-graph-and-data.html
This doesn’t include the energy impoverished who have no or highly restricted access.
Including the Transportation industry could require an additional 25,000Twh electric production.
This would mean an annual demand of 50,000 Twh electric generation.
As approximately 1/3 of the world experiences some form of energy poverty, to bring them up to a similar standards as developed nations would require an additional 30,000 Twh generation.
Then to supply energy to back up storage systems we will be looking at producing over 100,000 Twh annually just for the current population

What’ll likely happen is that China or Russia will contract to build and operate such nuclear facilities in the Third World, perhaps based offshore in a floating platform or special ship. (It might be ten years before this can be perfected. For safety, maybe “pebble bed” reactors would be used.) The economies of scale would make this very profitable. And the providers could pose as world-savers.
I wonder if those two countries are already dreaming of doing this. It’ll seem obvious in retrospect, if it comes to pass.

Controlling a potential enemies power and food supply is something that would be appealing.
No need to use military force to get what you want if you can just use the threat of starvation/social collapse instead.

Not rich nations, Rich Capitalists (those with the means to act) who think something needs to be done, and have the funding to do so have the responsibility to do so but not the right to force others to do so in kind. Politics has no place in Energy same as Energy has no place in Politics.

Coal is the most effective and cheapest way of generating wholesale electricity and with modern technology is as clean a you can get…. Anyone who says that developing nations shouldn’t use it, are dooming those societies to energy poverty and industrial irrelevance.

Woe be to the family that has a UN supplied Solar panel on their roof. It will come with a cost. They will never prosper. They’ll never see a factory built or a power plant erected in their energy regulated country under UN servitude.
That family and their country will never enter “The First World”.

I’m not so sure about that! Whoever conceived the CAGW-scam must be pretty high up (or should it be ‘low down’?) in the demonic hierarchy, I would think.
Motivated by pure malevolence towards civilized humanity, CAGW is an ingenious idea that effectively robs people of their common sense, fills their minds with crazy apocalyptic delusions about the imminent death of the planet and divides people against one another with prejudiced judgments and accusations, inspires them with noble cause corruption, which leads them to corrupt and pervert the basic pillar-institutions of society such as science, religion, economics, politics and even technology, and, by thus getting humanity to turn its entire world on its head, acts to bring about eventually the total collapse of human civilization and a global reversion to barbarism.
Don’t you think that this ingenious psy-war superweapon is a diabolical invention of which only an extraordinarily dark, humanity-hating intelligence would be capable? I do.
The fact that this devastating idea has emerged out of the collective human unconscious does not make it any the less diabolical, to my way of seeing it. To me the really appalling, horrifying truth of this situation is that the demons who have conspired to create it exist within ourselves and we must find the courage to do whatever it takes to confront them and conquer them there before we can put a stop to their disruptive and destructive machinations in the world.

I posted that humans could be responsible for 20-40% of recent (past 500 years) warming.
I was curious as whether this was “rot” because 20-40% is too high or too low.
20-40% of 1 C isn’t much warming.

“I was curious as whether this was “rot” because 20-40% is too high or too low.”
How does anyone know the answer to that?
ECS estimates have been constantly revised downwards, and are currently around 1.5C, which sets an upper boundary, but no lower boundary has been established. We don’t have the answer to that, so I see no basis for claiming humans are causing a certain percentage of warming of the Earth’s atmosphere. The lower boundary may be zero for all anyone knows.

That doesn’t create an upper boundary. All of these estimates have margins of error which range well above 3 C.
The preponderance of the evidence currently puts TCR at about 1.35 C and ECS at about 1.75 C (plus/minus error).
There are no estimates below 0 5 C and no recent estimates much above 2 C.
Humans are responsible for at least half of the rise in CO2. This mathematically makes us most likely responsible for 20-40% of the warming over the past 150-500 years.
Why would the most likely mathematical result drawn from the preponderance of current evidence be “rot”?

I comprehend Mr Nordhaus’s disappointment, but he should realize he became part of the problem when he, apparently, did not object to labelling some people “deniers”, as long as they were those evil “right-wing ideologues”.
If he really valued civilized debate, he should have denounced the use of loaded and derogatory terms from the very beginning.

I am a denier, and I am damn proud of it.
I deny that the so-called called climate record is a reliable record. I deny that the true record of the weather (as opposed to the ones cooked up by so-called “scientists”) supports a claim that the weather is measurably warmer now than it was in the first half of the 20th Century. I deny that climate models are anything other than mathematical masturbation. I deny that increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has any ill effect on any biological system. I deny that the so called climate scientists are honest men. I deny that so called climate scientists have engaged in anything other than fear mongering. I deny that polar bears are in any danger from warmer weather in the arctic. I deny that sea levels are rising faster than they have in the recent past. I deny that so called “tropical” diseases have any causal relation with warmer weather.
I affirm that the whole miserable theory of anthropogenic catastrophic global warming was created and advanced for the sole purpose of scarring people into surrendering their freedom, their property, and their prosperity to a global socialist government. I affirm that a warmer world is a happier, healthier, and more prosperous world. I affirm that CO2 is absolutely necessary for the existence of life on earth, and that we, and all other living things, are better off at 400 ppm than we were at 280 ppm. I affirm that it is more likely that the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is due to the end of the Little Ice Age than it is due to human activity. I affirm that humanity would be far better off by the aggressive exploration of fossil fuel energy resources to bring prosperity to Africa and Asia, than it would be by any change in the general climate.
I hope that many of you will join my denials and affirmations and add ones of your own.

Walter: Why stop there? How about denying that man and apes had a common ancestor? How about denying that the Earth circles the sun. Did the universe begin 13.5 billion years ago with a Big Bang and the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago or was it created in 7 days about 4000 years ago. Does a photon rely on the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics or chance to decide when to be absorbed by an atom it encounters. Do electrons circle a nucleus? If so, why don’t they follow Maxwell’s Laws and radiate off energy and spiral into the nucleus? Is the future path of the earth around the sun predictable by the laws of physics? Will doubling the minimum wage double the income of the average worker who is currently paid a minimum wage? Will raising taxes rase revenue? Was the Vietnamese National Liberation Front the result of an spontaneous internal revolt against Diem or a group directed by North Vietnam? Was the Civil War fought to preserve slavery or protect states rights? Did Bush know there were no WMD in Iraq when we invaded in 2003? Would Japan have surrendered if the atomic bomb had not been dropped? A line and a point not on that line define a plane. How many new lines can be drawn in that plane through the point that don’t intersect the first line? Does more CO2 in the atmosphere cause more CO2 to dissolve in the ocean? If so, does that lower ocean pH? Are all fundamental particles composed of strings? How many physical dimensions are there? Was there an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere at the end of the LIA? Who created the theory of CAGW and how do you know what he was thinking? What is the definition of mathematical masturbation? How do you know AOGCMs fit this definition? Is John Christy a dishonest climate scientist? How do you know? Is a kW-h of electricity from an intermittent renewable source as valuable as a kW-h from a dispatchable source?
How do you decide what to deny and what to believe? Religion? Political party? Prejudices about the Vietnam, Iraq and Civil Wars?
Science is not about what you believe, it is about what evidence supports your beliefs. Has that evidence been tested by others and found flawed or inconclusive? Would you care if it were? Before you deny someone else’s theory and substitute your own, do you actually bother to learn how the theory works?
Pick one one of your beliefs or one question to answer. Find some evidence that supports the answer you chose. Check to see if that evidence has failed to pass scrutiny. Someone else’s unsubstantiated belief is not evidence.
Calvin: “The more you know, the harder it is to take decisive action. Once you become informed, you start seeing complexities and shades of gray. You realize that nothing is as simple as it first appears. Ultimately, knowledge is paralyzing. Being a man of action, I can’t afford to take that risk.
Hobbes: You’re ignorant, but at least you act on it.

Oddly enough, there is substantially more evidence for the existence of demons than for catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
In another example of ignoring reality, the left denies the former whilst embracing unquestioned the latter. One would almost think it was demonic….

As a proud “Denier”, I have stopped arguing with the vermin of the progressive left, and instead have perfected a loud horse laugh. I practice this laugh after I mention the likely incestuous relationship of their parents, and walk away from them.
While all this global warming and denying are going on, I note that for the past three days in a row, I have had frost on my deck. I have lived here for more than 25 years, and this is the first time I have had frost.
So yes, I am a denier, but wish we had more of the stuff I am denying.

Are we getting now an insight to Barack’s recent statement as follows?we start seeing both in developed and developing countries an increased resentment about minority groups and the bad treatment of people who don’t look like us or practice the same faith as us.
After all, some alarmists have already been arrested and even jailed during Barack’s mandate. Pachauri and Hansen spring first to mind. And is it only me not finding any references to Oreskes at UN or FCCC websites? It’s like she never existed. WUWT?

Atkin:”……..where climate projections are lowballed; climate change impacts, damages, and costs are underestimated”.
Notice that what the Alarmists call “sleight-of-hand” is another term for “closer to reality”.

Graphs of global mean temperature since 1900 show temperature cycling. Going up and going down. To point at the recent end of the graph and say, “Oh, noes, the temperature is going up!!! And it’s not going to go back down! And it’s Man’s fault!” is just silly.
‘Climate change, of course, is real’
Without a definition, it’s not real. It is a reification fallacy.
‘Not so long ago, the term denier was reserved for right-wing ideologues, many of them funded by fossil fuel companies, who claimed that global warming either wasn’t happening at all or wasn’t caused by humans.’
The funding scandal again. Nordhaus is reading from a 20-year-old play book. At what point is it no longer just silly?

Is Climate Change real? Absolutely.
Is the Earth warming? We’re in an interglacial, so since the last ice age, absolutely.
Are humans responsible? I would be surprised if our land use and emissions from energy generation had no effect at all, so, yes, at least partially.
What portion of the warming is attributable to human activities? Unknown, but all objective evidence suggests that it must be a very small portion.
Is CO2 the main driver of climate change? Probably not. And the light/heat absorption spectrum of CO2 appears to be maxed out, so increasing CO2 should have diminishing returns for warming.
Will increased CO2 and Global Temperature be catastrophic? The Earth has had many periods with much higher CO2 and Global Temperature where life absolutely thrived, so no.
All this is opinion on my part, but I suspect it’s a common opinion amongst people who have have taken a good look at the available observed data and have a basic understanding of science. I’m not paid by anyone for my opinion, but I’ll happily cash in if someone wants to send me a check. 😉
I’m not sure what label would be applied to me, but I suspect it starts with a “D”.

Since the atmosphere was 95% volcanic CO2 and water vapour, the plants have reduced it to less than 1% and maintained it that way through major extinctions and disasters for over 1Bilion years, at ideal levels for carbon based life forms, in particaular oxygen breathing animals like us.. Even the BBC admits this.
Why should plants stop their dominant control of CO2 now, simply because there are statistical, not scientific, models that can correlate CO2 with temperature change and don’t include this dominant control as a significant variable. Note that climate models and statistoical and not determoinsitic science based on proven laws, BTW. Cannot prove cause and effect, e.g. Whether CO2 lags or leads the controlling oceanic temperature changes. Nothing is proven by statistical models except correlation. etc.
Where are plants in climate models? Simply increase their “forcing” so surplus CO2 is consumed and let’s se what the real effects are – or is it all noise vs statistically significant change, in short human lifetimes that are WELL inside any natural change periodicity, so also not noise timewise? Discuss.

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